The rest is Lineker: he strikes gold as a podcast mogul

He shoots, and inevitably, he scores. While most of us are happy being competent at one job, Gary Lineker has completed a hat-trick of career triumphs this month. First he was a feared striker and captain of the England football team, then one of the country’s most admired sports presenters as the anchor for Match of the Day. Now Lineker is fast making his name as a media mogul, as content made by his company Goalhanger Podcasts dominate the charts.

Lineker himself is the star of his latest offering, The Rest is Football, exchanging footie banter with fellow ex-pros Alan Shearer and Micah Richards. It quickly became the UK’s most listened-to podcast on its debut last week. But the former Spurs and Leicester star isn’t just the master of ceremonies this time — he co-founded and owns a third share of the firm that produces it.

Goalhanger Podcasts was only created at the start of 2022 but has enjoyed a stratospheric rise since. Even before this latest show, it could boast 17 and a half million downloads per month, largely due to the success of its two flagships, The Rest is History and The Rest is Politics. They have gained an army of loyal fans with a novel format: having seasoned professionals discuss their specialist subjects.

With their hits, Lineker and his co-owners have created a slightly surprising new set of middle-aged media stars. Fronting the history show, self-confessed grown-up nerds Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook have 20,000 subscribers to their ‘club’, paying for subscriber content. Meanwhile in politics, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart have become centrist dad rockstars, selling out the London Palladium in six minutes this spring.

So what’s the secret? Slowing things down, perhaps. In a world where many media outlets are looking for viral moments where people angrily shout at each other, Goalhanger is gentle. One of its mottos is that people should “disagree agreeably”. It’s an ethos that chimes with Lineker himself, who was famously never booked or sent off in his playing days. A second, against the advice of Michael Gove, is the appeal of listening to experts. Thirdly, while many outlets are on the right or left, they seem to aim for the centre.

Success hasn’t been instant. Just like most things he’s done, Lineker has had to work hard to make things look easy. In 2014, he started Goalhanger Films with Tony Pastor, ITV’s former controller of sport. They made documentaries on Wayne Rooney and Anthony Joshua, and tried out some podcasts, including one with Lineker and Danny Baker, a moderate hit. Then, in 2020, they stumbled on The Rest is History format, and haven’t looked back. An economics primer, The Rest is Money, with ITV News political editor Robert Peston and Channel 4 presenter Steph McGovern is coming soon.

Pastor is full of praise for Lineker and his “enquiring mind”, saying: “When I first met Gary and we discussed setting up a production company he said, ‘It must work’. I said, ‘Of course, that’s the plan’, and he said, ‘No, it must work … it must be the highest quality, I want it to really engage the audience’. This is a man who played football at the highest level and could have probably lived off that for the rest of his life, but has chosen to have a fantastic media career.”

The UK podcast industry is not huge, with analysts estimating ad spending of £58 million this year. But it’s global: in the US it is more than £1 billion annually. While it’s his major concern just now, Lineker’s many-pronged media career isn’t limited to Goalhanger. He is of course the BBC’s highest earner, still raking in £1.35 million a year, even after taking a £400,000 pay cut. He’s been the face of Walkers Crisps for three decades, signing a contract worth £1.2  million over three years in 2020.

He’s always been busy, but it’s been a particularly crazy year for the man with the big ears. For a long time, he rubbed up against managers at the BBC who didn’t like him posting his (generally liberal) political opinions online. He defended himself by saying he’s a freelance sport presenter, and his favoured subjects, such the refugee crisis and climate change, are humanitarian, not political. He clearly cares deeply about the former, hosting migrants in his home, after some suggested he back up his words with actions.

That long-running dance over opinions with the BBC came to a bruising head in spring, when Lineker replied to a video posted by Home Secretary Suella Braverman outlining the new Illegal Migration Bill, boasting she would deport all refugees. Lineker called the policy “immeasurably cruel”, and added that her language was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”. The BBC took him off screen, but then had to backtrack after an outcry by the public and his fellow presenters. It meant major egg on the face of BBC Director General Tim Davie, who largely had to accept Lineker’s insistence that he would tweet how he liked.

While that row is now in the past, a battle for power with the Beeb is in the background of many areas of Lineker’s empire. His co-hosts are both people he works with on Match of the Day, which has led some at the corporation to wonder why they didn’t think to make their own similar podcast in-house. Meanwhile, the co-founder of Goalhanger podcasts is Jack Davenport, an ex-BBC man himself.

It remains to be seen whether Lineker’s latest podcast will cause further issues with the corporation. The BBC say he’s allowed to work elsewhere as long as there is no “conflict”, but that might be hard, as he will be talking about the same games on his podcast as on BBC1 each Saturday. But the Beeb won’t want him to leave, even if they find him annoying sometimes. While the self-made 62-year-old is now an affable member of the metropolitan elite, he’s got a steely side.

One of his great strengths is how calm he remains under pressure, never fluffing his lines while millions are watching him live on air. He’s disciplined too, telling this newspaper earlier this year he only eats one big meal a day and goes to the gym three times a week. When he was still playing football at the highest level, he worked hard on his screen training, knowing he wanted to be a presenter.

Listeners to The Rest is Football can hear how much fun Lineker and his “couple of old friends” are having. The usually workmanlike Shearer drops the F-word with relish, while Lineker is more swaggering than on the Beeb’s football output, bigging up his own career. “We’ve talked about doing this for a while,” he says with pleasure,and seems genuinely moved by the reaction.

It’s started life at the top of the charts, but it will be hard for The Rest is Football to stay ahead of the pack. Football content is 10-a-penny. Gary and co’s analysis so far isn’t mindblowing (see Richards on the Champions League: “You have a couple of bad games and you’re out”). But one thing is for certain, as BBC bosses found earlier this year: don’t underestimate Gary Lineker.